Everyone is talking about how much money the government is spending, but very little attention is being paid to where they are spending it or what they are buying with it. The government is putting money into banks, even when the banks don't want it, in hopes that the banks will put it into circulation. But the latest statistics shows that banks are lending even less money now than they were before the government dumped all that cash on them. Even if it had worked, putting cash into banks, in hopes that they would put it into circulation, seems a rather roundabout way of doing things, especially when the staggering sums of money involved are being justified as an "emergency" measure.

Spending money for infrastructure is another time-consuming way of dealing with what is called an immediate crisis. Infrastructure takes forever to plan, debate, and go through all sorts of hearings and adjudications, before getting approval to build from all the regulatory agencies involved. Out of $355 billion newly appropriated, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year and only $110 billion by the end of 2010. Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.

If you cut taxes tomorrow, people would have more money in their next paycheck, and it would probably be spent by the time they got that paycheck, through increased credit card purchases beforehand. If all this sound and fury in Washington was about getting an economic crisis behind us, tax cuts could do that a lot faster.

None of this is rocket science. And Washington politicians are not all crazy, even if sometimes it looks that way. Often, what they say makes no sense because what they claim to be doing is not what they are actually doing. No matter how many times President Barack Obama tells us that these "extraordinary times" call for "swift action," the kind of economic policies he is promoting take effect very slowly, no matter how quickly the legislation is rushed through Congress. It is the old Army game of hurry up and wait.

If the Beltway politicians aren't really trying to solve this crisis as quickly as they could, what are they trying to do? One important clue may be a recent statement by President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, that "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." This is the kind of cynical revelation that sometimes slips out, despite all the political pieties and spin. Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government's power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized. That is why there is such haste to do things that will take effect slowly.

Such has been the fear of Greenland's melting glaciers that well known Australian science journalist Robyn Williams has claimed sea levels could rise by 100 metres within the next 100 years. Mr Williams, and other journalists, have been quick to report on what has become known as the "Greenland Ice Armageddon".

Last Friday there was an article in one of the most read science journals, Science, entitled "Galloping Glaciers of Greenland have Reined Themselves In" by Richard A. Kerr.

Yes, as the title suggests, the article explains that a wide-ranging survey of glacier conditions across south eastern Greenland, indicates that glacier melt has slowed significantly and that it would be wrong to attribute the higher rates of melt prior to 2005 to global warming or to extrapolate the higher melt rates of a few years ago into the future.

Mr Kerr was reporting on a presentation by glaciologist Tavi Murray at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco last December. The paper by Dr Murray was co-authored by many other members of the group at Swansea University in the UK, a team often quoted by Al Gore and others.

When I read the article last Friday I wondered how Robyn "100 metres" Williams and other journalists in the mainstream media (MSM) might report the story. To my amazement they have simply ignored it.

It seems that the mainstream media is a shameless exaggerator of global warming, and unable to report anything really significant that contradicts the established storyline.

Perhaps I should not be surprised, as a lecturer in journalism explained to me some time ago: journalists only add to narratives, as one might add to a large tapestry. [5] Yep, so, the mainstream media's news has to all fit together like a picture. What is reported tomorrow is expected to accord with what was reported yesterday. But the real world is so much more complicated.

Here indeed is what AGW sceptics are up against, especially here in New Zealand. The following is taken from a debate that was set up by the Avenues magazine of Christchurch. The debate featured Dr Gerrit van der Lingen as the AGW sceptic and Professor Bryan Storey as the AGW advocate. Their opposing arguments were then judged by a retired high court judge, Justice John Hansen, who claimed to be an unbiased observer.

In Dr van der Lingen's argument, he made the observation that Al Gore refuses to debate the points in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. In Professor Storey's response he said, quote:

"Our professional bodies recommend that we do not publicly engage in debates over climate change as it gives a platform for the vocal minority to express their views, often scientifically incorrect or carefully selected to distort a longer term trend. This will undoubtedly be the advice that the former US Vice President Al Gore will have received, influencing his decision not to engage in televised debates."

If this is not totally unscientific I do not know what is. The statement unequivocally precludes discussing the issues with anybody, scientists included. It is not as if the TV people would make the mistake of putting a layman up against Gore, and even if they did, he could then be excused for refusing to debate (even though he is a layman himself). Also it makes nonsense of the judge's claim of being unbiased, since if New Zealand scientists are told not to debate the issue, the evidence against AGW is going to go unheard by the supposedly unbiased public, to which the retired judge belongs.

At first I thought Dr Lingen's comparison of the one-sided reporting of climate change issues with Nazi propaganda a little strong, but if peer debate about climate change is not going to be conducted, the whole issue is an attempt at a scientific whitewash by the AGW proponents.

Because Greenies go ballistic at plans to build dams, politicians are very slow to build them. So we have water shortages. And the very expensive "solution" to that -- promoted by the government -- is for each house to have its own rainwater tank. Talk about "drought" below is a coverup. It rains every couple of days where I live -- which must be the world's strangest "drought" -- but we still have severe restrictions on water usage and subsidies for people to buy household tanks. But the cost of the tanks is not the only problem:

Backyard water tanks, a key weapon for Australian households in the battle against drought and climate change, may prove a double-edged sword if they help the mosquito that spreads dengue fever to penetrate deep into southern and inland Australia. Melbourne researchers who set out to measure how much further the dengue mosquito might spread as the climate heats up discovered that water hoarding by households was likely to prove a much bigger help to the insect. The species responsible for spreading dengue in Australia, Aedes aegypti, is largely confined to Townsville, Cairns and Queensland's far north, where two outbreaks of dengue are continuing to worsen.

There have now been 198 confirmed cases of dengue fever in Cairns and 21 in Townsville, according to figures released last night. The Townsville outbreak is particularly alarming because two of the four types of dengue are circulating simultaneously, raising the risk that someone will suffer a potentially fatal second infection.

Scientists from Melbourne University say climate change and evolutionary adaptation are making more of Australia habitable for the insect, but human behaviours may be smoothing the mosquito's path even more. "While we predict that climate change will directly increase habitat suitability throughout much of Australia, the potential indirect impact of changed water storage practices by humans in response to drought may have a greater effect," the authors write.

Lead researcher and zoology lecturer Michael Kearney said there had been a "dramatic increase" in domestic rainwater storage in response to drought. "Water tanks and other water storage vessels, such as modified wheelie bins, are potential breeding sites for this disease-bearing mosquito," Dr Kearney said. "Without due water-storage hygiene, this indirect effect of climate change via human adaptation could dramatically re-expand the mosquito's range." Dr Kearney said the findings did not mean water tanks should be avoided. Instead, it was important for householders to realise the tanks should be properly sealed to prevent mosquito access, which meant avoiding improvised or badly made tanks and opting for versions that met Australian standards. "Australian-standard water tanks have brass mesh protecting the inlet and outlet valves, which are less likely to degrade," he said.

About 100 years ago, Aedes aegypti was more widespread, being found in Darwin and Broome, along the east coast as far south as Sydney, inland to Bourke and even in Perth. Its range diminished through the last decades of the 20th century for reasons not well understood, but Dr Kearney said his team's work suggested the removal of old galvanised water tanks and installation of town water supplies may have helped.

The invention of insecticides and even lawnmowers may also have played a part by encouraging householders to keep gardens under better control and to clear away discarded pots and other receptacles that could provide the mosquito with a place to lay eggs.

Queensland Institute of Medical Research's Tim Hurst has studied water storage in Brisbane households and how this might affect mosquito breeding. "About 50 per cent of the houses we surveyed have rainwater tanks, but about 30 per cent of those are collecting water in other containers -- such as buckets and wheelie bins," he said. [You would do that too if you were forbidden by law to water your garden]

Please forgive me for starting with an enormous cliche but: "Man is a social animal". And that observation underlies some further remarks that I want to make about group belonging and connectedness to others generally. I have of course written at length on that before and pointed out the paradox that conservatives -- who very much respect individualism and individual liberty -- are also the ones who are most at ease with being members of a group -- such as a nation -- where pride in group membership is of course called patriotism. Being human, Leftists too have such a need but their miserable and constant criticism of the world about them normally inhibits their feelings of group membership. So when they do find a group that they approve of they go completely overboard -- as with Obamania or Nazism.

And the constant Leftist accusation that any group loyalty is "racism" has inhibited or even destroyed some of the group loyalties that people once felt. I don't blame my readers for being unaware of it but particularly ethical or generous behavior was in the early 20th century often referred to by the English as "white". "That's very white of you" was once a great compliment and expression of appreciation. Yes. People were once proud of being white. These days that is a huge no-no, of course. Black pride is great but white pride is now allegedly an unmitigated evil. Even though the people who defeated Hitler were in fact overwhelmingly -- white.

And where shreds of the old group loyalties have survived Leftist attack, it is remarkable how popular they are. People need such things so they grab what is left. And I want to give three examples of that -- all largely from my own experience but not solely so.

The first is ANZAC day. ANZAC day is a great Australian tradition. It commemorates the landing of Australian soldiers under British command in Northern Turkey during WWI. Due to typical British military bungling, it was a disaster but the heroism of the troops in their parlous situation was widely reported and admired. And the anniversary of that landing is now Australia's most significant national day. It is the day on which we remember our many war dead and there are traditions about how we do that. A central tradition is the dawn service. The original ANZAC troops went ashore at dawn and at that very time their sacrifice is honoured to this day. A service is always held at a local war memorial or cenotaph at that time. And certain traditional words are said there at that time too.

So who goes to these services? Old guys who still remember their war service? They do indeed. But lots of young people go too. They sense a great national tradition and they grasp it eagerly. And although the original ANZAC troops are now long dead, the crowds at the commemorative services are bigger than ever. It is to this day a great day of Australian pride and undoubtedly Australia's most solemn day of celebration. It goes from strength to strength. There have been Leftist attempts to mock it but such attempts have been like water off a duck's back. A book mocking it was in fact for a time a set text in many Australian schools but even that did not succeed at working the usual Leftist destruction.

And my second example is much more mundane but in a way more amazing. To understand how amazing you need to know what the Scots and the English think of one another. It is not good. Tolerance describes it but there is not much more than that. And sometimes even the tolerance breaks down. Old memories going back to the 13th century die hard, amazingly enough. Yet at my last Burns Night -- an ineradicable and unashamed Scottish celebration of great sentimentality -- I had several English-born guests present -- with attitudes to all things Scottish that were typically English. They didn't even really like the pipes (bagpipe music)! Yet I started the night by distributing the words of "Scotland the Brave" and asking everyone to sing it. It is of course a great patriotic and very sentimental Scottish song so I was mildly surprised that my English guests sang it with as much gusto as anyone else. They "got into it" as well as anyone else.

And that is not just something from my own social circle. It was recently reported that there were in fact this year more Burns Night celebrations -- always highly ritualized and traditional occasions -- in England than there were in Scotland! Such is the need for old customs and unashamed feelings of connectedness and uniting in something significant.

And then there is Australia day. Australia day was for a long time more an official holiday than a people's holiday. Australians are in general patriotic but not ostentatiously so. The day commemorates the first landing of British settlers in Australia on Jan. 26, 1788. Leftists fume about it of course and say it should be renamed "Invasion day" because there were already at the time black people living in Australia. And Greenies think it is a tragedy too -- because of the "damage" the white settlers did to the natural landscape. So on the Australia Day just past there was a call to move the day of celebration to some other date -- a call which our centre-Left Prime Minister firmly rejected. He has good political instincts.

The interesting thing about Australia day, however is that HAS now become a people's holiday. As mainstream Australians have been fed -- in the schools and from the media -- a steady diet of white guilt and how wonderful blacks and Muslims are, the more they have turned to celebrating their own identity and history. And Australia day is an opportunity for that. It is now common on Australia day to see cars on the road with one or more Australian flags fluttering from them. Various organizations actually hand them out for that purpose. That never used to be the case. And even Australians of East Asian origin (of whom Australia has many) sometimes get into the spirit and wear Australian symbols -- such as the flag -- on their clothing. They see no problems with what the British wrought here and are glad to be Australians. So the Leftist attack on Australian patriotism has in fact energized it and made it an occasion for coming together. I gave an extended coverage of the Australia day just past on my AUSTRALIAN POLITICS blog.

Just a very small point to end up with: In my childhood I was often told in tones of awe and reverence that my great-grandfather was in the Black Watch. So what is the Black Watch? Basically, it is just another Scottish regiment in the British army. But it isn't just that. It is the Black Watch and you have to have traditional Scottish feelings and knowledge of history to understand that. Being in the Black Watch is REAL belongingness, a source of pride and honour.

And I DO like haggis! As I have already mentioned, there is a small account on my personal blog of my most recent Burns Night -- for what slight interest it may have.

The obscenely misnamed "Stimulus Package" will NOT stimulate the economy, but it WILL grow the government.Do NOT believe the propaganda coming from Capitol Hill and the White House. They are LYING to you.

Don't take my word for it, learn the history, read the facts from Heritage.org.......and yes, I am a supporter of the Heritage Foundation. They don't pay me, I pay them.In my opinion, it's money well spent, since an informed public is an investment in my kids' futures.

Now, the question is: What will YOU do with that information?(do I need to spell it out?)

Wotta lotta crap the story below is. It is more money spent on engineering inspections and maintenance that is needed, not more talk. Passengers are a lot more worried about bits falling off the aircraft than they are about the brightness of someone's smile. And how about having enough check-in desks open so that passengers can board without waiting in line for an hour or more? And WTF has wine appreciation got to do with any of QANTAS's problems? John Borghetti must be another typically clueless business-school graduate. It sounds to me like Qantas is headed the way of the now defunct Ansett -- a once great Australian airline that also lost its way

QANTAS is about to send 18,000 staff, from the chief executive down, back to school as part of a massive push to boost customer service standards. A high-tech $10 million training facility, which opened yesterday in Sydney, is at the centre of the strategy to propel the Qantas brand back to the top.

The move comes after a horror year for the airline where delays and maintenance problems battered its reputation with travellers, The Australian reports. Up to a third of its planes ran late and cancellations sky-rocketed as a result of an industrial row with engineers. It also comes as full-service airlines, which face a downturn in premium passengers because of the economic crisis, are being forced to compete more fiercely to fill business and first class seats.

The new Centre of Service Excellence brings all Qantas customer service training under one roof and covers areas ranging from makeup and grooming to telesales, check-in procedures and wine appreciation. Facilities include a 126-seat auditorium, four cabin-crew training pods that simulate aircraft environments and a hi-tech area where staff can send suggestions to management using interactive screens. It also features "customer experience zones", demonstrating the environments that passengers in various classes, and on various arms of Qantas, experience in the course of their journey.

Qantas executive general manager John Borghetti, who will be the first top executive to undergo training, said one of the main changes Qantas passengers could expect as a result of the new centre was more consistency in the airline's customer service. He said customer service would be a big differentiator for airlines competing for high-end customers in difficult times.

It might upset the fish, you know. So: Coal, nuclear and hydroelectic are positively EVIL; windmills are no good; tidal power is no good. There's just no such thing as a happy Greenie. Report from Britain:

Whichever, if any, tidal scheme is built on the Severn, it is sure to anger some environmentalists. Being a renewable source of electricity, tidal generators might be assumed to be popular with the green lobby. Yet there are serious reservations over the environmental costs of a barrage or lagoon in the estuary - and they have split the environmentalist movement.

On the one hand there is the appeal of doing something positive about climate change by turning to a renewable, rather than burnable, source of energy. Environmental activists have been urging governments, power companies and the public to embrace renewable energy because it is cleaner than fossil fuels and nuclear power. On the other hand, thousands of hectares of shoreline will be destroyed as a feeding ground for birds - an internationally important feeding ground, no less. There are also deep concerns about the impact on the fish and invertebrates in the Severn. Barrages and, to a lesser extent, lagoons form a physical barrier to species such as salmon and eels as they migrate. The dilemma is balancing the potential damage to habitat against the gains made in combating climate change.

If measures such as the Cardiff-Weston barrage are not taken, how much of the river will be claimed anyway by sea-level rises from melting ice caps and how many creatures will be forced to find somewhere else to live because temperatures have become unbearable?

Some of the projects that missed the shortlist are regarded as having less of an impact on the environment but they are the most unproven schemes and, however attractive their merits, their effectiveness is questionable. When coming to their decision on tidal schemes for the Severn - and perhaps one day the Mersey, the Wyre and the Thames - ministers will have plenty of factors to weigh up. There will be the jobs created - the bigger the scheme the bigger the job creation prospects - and there will be the economic damage caused by limiting navigation of the Severn and access to upstream ports. There will be the attraction of plumping for a huge barrage that will be a monument to their tenure in office, to be set against the affordability of constructing such an edifice.

But most of all they will have to judge whether the wider environment will best be served by sacrifice or preservation.

OK. That heading is a bit unfair. I think Kevvy is a bit misguided but I don't think he is a bad man at all. It is however entirely in keeping that a Leftist would have a scheme to organize the nation's youth into some form of government-run youth organization. There was the Hitler Jugend, Stalin's Komsomol, Putin's "Nashi" and Obama also has proposed something of the sort. Kevvy's version, however, seems reasonable enough, though undoubtably socialistic (government-run)

Kevin Rudd wants to recruit an army of young volunteers to help the elderly, feed the homeless, and clean up the environment. In exchange for giving up their time, members of the new Community Corps would get discounts on their university HECS debts. The proposal could attract tens of thousands of volunteers from the 1.3 million Australians with a higher education debt. The average ex-student has a $12,000 HECS debt, which typically takes more than seven years to pay off. The scheme could wipe out students' debts as they accumulate hours of community service, the Herald Sun reports.

The plan, backed by top business minds and embraced by community and welfare groups, emerged from the Prime Minister's 2020 summit. The Government is expected to adopt it within days when it releases its final 2020 summit report.

Mr Rudd, who has pleaded for Australians to pull together to beat the rapidly worsening economic downturn, has described the idea as "a very practical trade". Corps members could deliver meals on wheels, youth and Aboriginal services, become volunteer firefighters, or assist the disabled and elderly. Landcare and water projects could also benefit. It is understood the Corps would operate within Australia, unlike the US Peace Corps, which works on projects across the globe.

The plan is believed to be one of about six big ideas from the 2020 summit to get the green light. After the summit, Mr Rudd said: "We need more volunteering in the community, and students are emerging from university with a whole lot of debt. "The idea . . . where young people would go out and provide voluntary service in the community in exchange for reducing their HECS debt . . . is one we want to consider."

Brotherhood of St Lawrence chief executive Tony Nicholson said there would be plenty for Community Corps members to do. "It could range from assisting with recreational programs to driving a community bus, to assisting disadvantaged people get to the doctor or do their shopping," he said. Mr Nicholson said those with special skills, such as IT graduates, would be particularly useful.

When the idea was floated at the summit, the architect of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, Prof Bruce Chapman, said it would appeal to wealthier students. Poorer students, he said, would probably prefer to enter the paid workforce.

As much as I swear off talking about Jewish matters I still seem unable to stay silent about it for long.

There are some politically active people in the Melbourne Jewish community and I do what I can to circulate their material when I can. One of their movers and shakers, Ralph Zwier, has recently written a small article on the old, old controversy about people saying "Some of my best friends are Jews". That remark is, rather paradoxically, usually interpreted as indicating that the person uttering it is antisemitic. So although Ralph and I have had an amicable and frequent correspondence for some time, you can understand why I would never dare to call him one of my best friends!

But isn't that a bit paradoxical? What are genuinely philosemitic people supposed to say? Are they supposed to say: "None of my best friends are Jews"? There is actually an answer to that in the Bible. I find it in three of the Proverbs of Solomon the Wise: "He who flatters a man spreads a net for his feet" (Proverbs 29:5 R.S.V.); "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy" (Proverbs 27: 6. R.S.V.); "He who rebukes a man will afterward find more favour than he who flatters with his tongue" (Proverbs 28: 23 R.S.V.). In short, a true friend is CRITICAL, but constructively so. So by that standard I think I stand up rather well, in that I have on several occasions (e.g. here) remarked that Jews as a whole tend to be politically stupid and have endeavoured to point to wiser paths that they might follow.

But that does that wash? I perfectly understand that many Jews might see me as being simply impertinent and ignorant. So is it the case that Gentiles are damned whether they speak either good or ill of Jews? Nearly but not quite. Ralph Zwier's point is that antisemites say things which indicate that they have BENEFITED from Jews. the obvious corollary is that a real philosemite would actually do things the other way around: He would do things that benefit Jews rather than seeking benefits FROM Jews. And I think that is a completely commonsense observation. My way of supporting the Jewish community is to defend Israel in any way I can and to donate to Israeli charities. And, Yes, I do have some Jewish friends whom I value greatly.

And, sadly, innocents get caught in the crossfire. And until the authorities start enforcing a "one rule for all" policy, the anger is going to get worse. Lebanese Muslims give particular offence to other Australians because of their frequently aggressive attitudes and a history of gang rapes among some of them. And Muslims tend to be big on demands for special treatment as Muslims, which offends traditionally egalitarian Australian attitudes

It was a day to celebrate all things Australian but it quickly descended into an afternoon of violence and racism echoing the ugly stain of the 2005 Cronulla riots in NSW. Once the embodiment of all things good about the country, Australia Day today became a scene of brawls and vandalism across NSW - with anger spreading from Shellharbour in the south to Port Macquarie in the north, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Wild brawls were also reported on the Gold Coast at Burleigh Beach, with hundreds of teenagers coming together in a series of violent confrontation on the popular family beach. The brawls occurred at about 3pm and a heavy police presence was on hand. Several arrests were made.

In the Sydney suburb of Manly [one of Sydney's most popular beaches], hundreds of youths draped in "Aussie pride" livery wore slogans declaring "f--k off we're full" as they smashed car windows and ran up the famous Corso targeting non-white shop keepers. A 18-year-old Asian female in one of the cars was showered with shattered glass, giving her numerous cuts to her arms. She was treated on the scene by ambulance officers. A taxi driven by a Sikh Indian was also targeted while an Asian shopkeeper was reportedly assaulted. Groups of men jumped up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within, and were heard singing "tits out for the boys" at passing girls and yelled "lets go f--k with these Lebs".

What started as chants of "Aussie Aussie Aussie" at 1pm (AEDT) had in an hour had developed the potential to resemble Cronulla Beach in 2005. By 3.30pm (AEDT) Manly Police called in the public order and riot squad and PolAir in an attempt to control the crowd, made up of a core group of troublemakers estimated by police about 80 drunks teenagers from out of town. By 4.30pm (AEDT) the rain came and the cooled tensions as police began to regain control. By the end three cars were damaged, one 16-year-old boy was charged with assaulting police, two 16-year-olds were cautioned for offensive behaviour and one cautioned for jumping into the water infront of the ferry.

Manly Superintendent Dave Darcy said group of teens came in from out of town. "We are significantly ramping up our investigative response and we're determined to hold these people to account for their behaviour," he said. "We've brought in some police from the areas where these people are from with their local knowledge in identifying these people. "If they came over to Manly seeking anonymity for their behaviour they're sadly mistaken."

Police were called to a report of a 30-person brawl on Shelly Beach Road at Port Macquarie while another 30 people were reportedly fighting on Towns St in Shellbarbour.

It is true that many Asians see the use of toilet paper as "dirty" and wash their bottoms instead. But let me say what is unsaid below: Asian lavatories are set up for washing. Australian lavatories are not. The result is that Asians following their customs in Australia tend to leave a lot of water on the floor around the toilet pedestal -- sometimes polluted water. And that makes it most unpleasant for other users. The company was entirely reasonable in protecting its employees from that. In the circumstances, it is rather a surprise that the union representative attacked the company. I don't think he represents his workers. Below is an excerpt from an email about the matter that I received from one North Queensland worker:

"The Yanks would call this a bum rap. I read this in the Courier Mail the other day. I am geting a bit sick of these bleeding hearts coming out backing these gippo pricks crying about cultural rights. If the union wanted to do something constructive they would be placing a ban on these muslim clerics preaching wife beating etc and calling for their immediate extradition. I don't know where all this, the average Aussie is tolerant and welcomes migrants, comes from. What a crock of sh*t. The government knows that the majority of Australians don't want these pricks in Australia but keep pandering to the rowdy miniority. No one is game to say to much in case they end up in court"

A Townsville man has been sacked for `un-Australian' toilet habits. Amador Bernabe, 43, uses water to clean himself instead of toilet paper. Mr Bernabe, a machine operator on a working visa from the Philippines, said it was his culture. But on Thursday he got the shock of his life when his foreman followed him into the toilet questioning his toilet hygiene.

Mr Bernabe said his employer Townsville Engineering Industries (TEI) sacked him yesterday for not going to the toilet the Australian way. TEI, which is located at the Bohle, could not be reached for comment yesterday. The move has angered union bosses and politicians on the Australia Day weekend.

PALESTINIAN civilians living in Gaza during the three-week war with Israel have spoken of the challenge of being caught between Hamas and Israeli soldiers as the radical Islamic movement that controls the Gaza strip attempted to hijack ambulances.

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. "Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told the Herald. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety. "After the first week, at night time, there was a call for a house in Jabaliya. I got to the house and there was lots of shooting and explosions all around," he said. Because of the urgency of the call, Mr Shriteh said there was no time to arrange his movements with the IDF. "I knew the Israelis were watching me because I could see the red laser beam in the ambulance and on me, on my body," he said.

Getting out of the ambulance and entering the house, he saw there were three Hamas fighters taking cover inside. One half of the building had already been destroyed. "They were very scared, and very nervous . They dropped their weapons and ordered me to get them out, to put them in the ambulance and take them away. I refused, because if the IDF sees me doing this I am finished, I cannot pick up any more wounded people. "And then one of the fighters picked up a gun and held it to my head, to force me. I still refused, and then they allowed me to leave."

Mr Shriteh says Hamas made several attempts to hijack the al-Quds Hospital's fleet of ambulances during the war. "You hear when they are coming. People ring to tell you. So we had to get in all the ambulances and make the illusion of an emergency and only come back when they had gone."

>>>this just in from the Drudge Report:PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMYSun Jan 25 2009 22:13:43 ET

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, "Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom," seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.

The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC's THIS WEEK.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

And, of course, the Sacred Sock Puppet DID promise to close Gitmo in a year (sorta), and he DID promise to "create or preserve" a whole MESS of jobs...so it looks like President bumper sticker has found an innovative way to do two things at once - he's gonna get the former Gitmo detainees jobs with al-Qaida!

A British employment tribunal has ruled that a Christian counselor was wrongfully dismissed after he expressed reservations about offering sexual advice to homosexuals, but the judges rejected his claim of religious discrimination.

The ruling by the Bristol Employment Tribunal in the United Kingdom on Gary McFarlane, a relationship counselor with the company Relate Avon, is a disorganized precedent that should be addressed, according to Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Christian Legal Center, which worked on McFarlane's case.

"The law is in a confused state; in the case of Lillian Ladele, the Islington registrar, the court held that Christian belief must give way to the rights of same sex couples; but in the case of Gary McFarlane there is a finding of wrongful dismissal," Williams said. "The courts and public are confused; we call on the government to recognize the legitimate expression of conscience by Christians in the area of sexual orientation and provide protection where necessary."

The legal center said McFarlane had worked at Relate since 2003 and had encountered "hostility" at the organization. "Although Mr.McFarlane had never had to provide sex therapy to a same-sex couple, he thought that if the situation did arise, he would be able to discuss his Christian views with his supervisors so that his position could be discussed and if necessary accommodated," according to the legal center report. Instead, after a letter circulated at Relate that accused McFarlane of being a "homophobe," he was suspended in January 2008 and dismissed two months later.

"If I were a Muslim, this would not have happened. But Christians seem to have fewer and fewer rights," McFarlane said.

The legal center cited a recent court opinion that found Muslims imprisoned for sex offenses may opt out of therapy. "It is important to note that Mr. McFarlane has never refused to counsel a same-sex couple; he merely raised the potential conflict between his Christian faith and homosexual conduct," Williams said. "It is deeply disturbing that the mere expression of religious belief with an inability to give unqualified support to sexual orientation issues means that a Christian can be dismissed with no attempt to provide suitable accommodation for his or her beliefs. The law preventing religious discrimination against Christians is in danger of becoming a dead letter," Williams said.

The tribunal, however, said, "The claimant was not treated as he was because of his Christian faith, but because (Relate) believed that he would not comply with its policies." Mike Judge of the Christian Institute said the conclusion means the laws "are not being applied equally." Relate had stated in support of its decision, "His religious faith is not relevant; it is the application of it to the equal opportunities policy."

It seems that in Britain too these days a "teen" refers to a BLACK teen. The picture below was NOT included in the news report that I reproduce below. In response to events such as that below, British commentators often ask where "we" have gone wrong. The "we" is misplaced. It should be "they". The fact that American jails are stuffed to the gills with blacks is just coincidence, of course

Two teenagers were given life sentences today for the murder of schoolboy Lyle Tulloch who was stabbed 13 times during an argument over a mobile phone at a birthday party. Damien Solowabe, 18, and Tobi Peters, 17, both of London, will serve a minimum 12 years after being found guilty at the Old Bailey last December.

Lyle, 15, from Peckham, had been at a party in Southwark, south-east London, last May when his friend asked to use Solowabe's phone. When Solowabe could not find it an argument began and Lyle was chased outside and into a stairwell where he was stabbed in the chest and thigh.

"This is another tragic example of what can happen when knives are used to settle arguments," said Scotland Yard's Detective Inspector David Willis, in a statement after sentencing.

Very strange ideas in a mostly empty country. Most people who live in Manhattan wouldn't live anywhere else but it has at least 100 times the population-density of Australia

Prominent Australians have thrown their support behind a controversial new book which argues that population growth is the biggest threat to environmental sustainability in this country. In a provocative attack on water conservation schemes, such as Melbourne's Target 155, the book Overloading Australia urges Australians to ignore water conservation, forcing politicians to rethink population and immigration policy.

Focusing on perhaps the most taboo aspect of environmental debate, authors Mark O'Connor and William Lines have argued that pro-immigration and "baby bonus" policies are at odds with plans to reduce carbon emissions and secure water supplies. "The task of simultaneously increasing population and achieving sustainability is impossible," the book argues. Predicting Australian cities will suffer more congestion, pollution, loss of biodiversity and diminished services, the authors argue there is no point conserving water "until we get restraint in population".

O'Connor said his background was largely in poetry, yet despite his lack of conventional expertise in demography and population studies, his book has struck a chord with prominent Australians and increasingly echoes the views of leading environmentalists. Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr has agreed to launch the book next week, and has lauded O'Connor's previous books about the perils of unchecked population growth. The Australian Conservation Foundation has also called for a "substantial reduction" in the nation's skilled migration program in this year's budget. In its budget submission, the foundation said Australia's population needed to be stabilised at "an ecologically sustainable level". "Population increase makes it harder for Australia to reduce carbon pollution levels and is placing immense stress on state and regional planning, infrastructure and ecological systems."

The comments will resonate with the Brumby Government [of Vivtoria], which has presided over an increase in total emissions in recent years, despite improvements in emissions on a per capita basis. Monash University population expert Dr Bob Birrell, who has read Overloading Australia, said despite the global nature of the emissions problem, national borders still mattered because people tended to adopt the typical emissions profile of the nation they lived in. "When you add an extra million in a society like ours you are imposing a very considerable additional burden, there is no way of escaping it, and that's the key to understanding why the population issue is so serious in Australia; we live very high on the hog," he said.

Australia will welcome a maximum of 203,500 new migrants this financial year, with skilled migration accounting for 133,500 of those places, and refugees just 13,500. A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the Rudd Government had started developing a longer-term migration plan that would consider "net overseas migration rates and the impact of demographic changes".

Victoria has swelled by about 1500 people a week in recent years, a rate that Premier John Brumby has described as "about as fast as we want to go".

"The U.S. Department of Justice has been trying since 1998 to convince courts that a federal antiporn law targeting sexually explicit Web sites was constitutional. No longer.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected prosecutors' last-ditch defense of the Child Online Protection Act, meaning that the law will not be enforced. COPA was enacted during the anti-Internet porn scares of the late 1990s, in part as a narrower answer to a previous Net censorship law that also met its demise in the courts."

The whole thing is based on "estimates" and "reconstructions" of Antarctic temperatures, not on actual measurements! How surprising that the authors come up with "estimates" that confirm their well-known beliefs! Excerpts from one commentary below. See the original for links. First however, see below an amusing graph taken from the home page of one of the authors of the new "study". It is a graph of actual warming and shows -- wait for it -- that Antarctica COOLED. These crooks cannot even keep their own story straight! I'm saving a copy of the graph in case they delete it

A new study on Antarctic temperatures - which is contrary to the findings of multiple previous studies - claims "that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, but still is 50 degrees below zero."

Despite the fact that the study was immediately viewed with major skepticism by scientists who are not skeptical of anthropogenic global warming claims, many in the media pounced on the study as a chance to attack those skeptical of man-made climate doom. According to the release of the study, "The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends. [.] The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations." (emphasis added)

Few media outlets noted that in 2007 Antarctic "sea ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area."

The new Antarctic study was published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature and the lead author of the study was Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and Space Sciences. Other co-authors include: David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, a former student of Steig's; Scott Rutherford of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI; and Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, who is not in any way a climate change skeptic, said of the study, "I remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist." Echoing Trenberth's analysis were several other scientists.

Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville questioned the study. "One must be very cautious with such results because they have no real way to be validated," Christy told the AP. "In other words, we will never know what the temperature was over the very large missing areas that this technique attempts to fill in so that it can be tested back through time," Christy added.

Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder said the authors of the Antarctic study "overstated" their results. "In terms of the significance of their paper, it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," Pielke told the AP. "In the abstract they write, for example, `West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years.' However, even a cursory view of Figure 2 shows that since the late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their analysis in this region. The paper would be more balanced if they presented this result, even if they cannot explain why," Pielke wrote. Pielke also questioned how the authors "reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler than average long term sea surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of Antarctica." Pielke added, "These cool anomalies have been there for at least several years. This cool region is also undoubtedly related to the above average Antarctic sea ice areal coverage that has been monitored over recent years."

A critical analysis of the paper from December 21, 2008, accused the authors of the Antarctic study of making questionable data "adjustments." (See: Scientist adjusts data -- presto, Antarctic cooling disappears - December 21, 2008) The analysis concluded, "Looks like [study author] Steig 'got rid of' Antarctic cooling the same way [Michael] Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why not just look at the station data instead of 'adjusting' it (graph above)? It shows a 50-year cooling trend," the analysis concluded.

The BBC's Richard Black filed a report on the new study that included this claim: "'It's hard to think of any situation where increased greenhouse gases would not lead to warming in Antarctica,' said Drew Shindell from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York." Sadly, Black of the BBC does not report that the promoters of man-made global warming fears had already concocted explanations for the failure of Antarctica to warm as models predicted.

The warming partisans at RealClimate.org have claimed that a cooling Antarctica is just what the models predict! "A cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict," stated a February 12, 2008, post on Real Climate titled "Antarctica is Cold? Yeah, We Knew That." The website claimed "Despite the recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger. Doesn't this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict. and have predicted for the past quarter century."

So which is it? Models predict Antarctic cooling or do they predict warming? If Antarctica is now allegedly warming, why didn't the models predict that? The spin [more like a cartwheel] by Michael Mann of RealClimate.org and the media on this study is stunning.

Real Climate's logic was mocked by Professor Roger Pielke, Jr., professor in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado. "So a warming Antarctica and a cooling Antarctica are both `consistent with' model projections of global warming. Our foray into the tortured logic of 'consistent with' in climate science raises the perennial question, what observations of the climate system would be inconsistent with the model predictions?" Pielke Jr. wrote on January 21.

Some more reactions to the New Study

Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann Touts Study as a Way to Refute Skeptics. Excerpt: "Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming," said study co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and Real Climate contributor. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ... It is not bucking the trend." [Note: For a reality check on Michael Mann's failed attempt to resurrect the "Hockey Stick," see this report.]

Meteorologist Anthony Watts who runs WattsUpWithThat.com also questioned Mann's involvement in the study. "Anytime Michael Mann gets involved in a paper and something is 'deduced' it makes me wary of the veracity of the methodology. Why? Mann can't even correct simple faults like latitude-longitude errors in data used in previous papers he's written," Watts wrote on January 21.

Even Pro-AGW scientists wary of this new study! Kevin Trenberth says `I remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist.' Excerpt: The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions with such sparse information. "This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is hard to make data where none exist." Shindell said it was more comprehensive than past studies and jibed with computer models.

Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville slams new Antarctic study for using "best estimate of the continents temperature" Excerpt: Technique questioned: Researchers in this study developed a new technique that combined data from satellites and automated weather stations in Antarctica to make what they say is the best estimate of the continent's temperature so far. However, there are very few weather stations on Antarctica, and the satellite data have been available for only the past 25 years. This troubles some scientists. "One must be very cautious with such results because they have no real way to be validated," says atmospheric scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who was not part of the study. "In other words, we will never know what the temperature was over the very large missing areas that this technique attempts to fill in so that it can be tested back through time." Researchers had thought Antarctica was getting cooler in part because of the ozone hole over the South Pole. This break in the protective ozone layer brings cooling weather patterns across parts of Antarctica. Steig agrees that the ozone hole has contributed to cooling in East Antarctica. "However, it seems to have been assumed that the ozone hole was affecting the entire continent, when there wasn't any evidence to support that idea, or even any theory to support it," he adds.

Pielke Sr. Challenges New Antarctic Study - January 21, 2009. By Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Excerpt: 3. How do the authors reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler than average long term sea surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of Antarctica? [see: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.15.2009.gif]. These cool anomalies have been there for at least several years. This cool region is also undoubtedly related to the above average Antarctic sea ice areal coverage that has been monitored over recent years; see http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg]. 4. In Figure 2 of their paper, much of their analyzed warming took place prior to 1980. For East Antarctica, the trend is essentially flat since 1980. The use of a linear fit for the entire period of the record produces a larger trend than has been seen in more recent years. In terms of the significance of their paper, it overstates what they have obtained from their analysis. In the abstract they write, for example, "West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1C per decade over the past 50 years". However, even a cursory view of Figure 2 shows that since the late 1990s, the region has been cooling in their analysis in this region. The paper would be more balanced if they presented this result, even if they cannot explain why.

Scientist adjusts data -- presto, Antarctic cooling disappears - December 21, 2008: Abstract excerpt: "We use statistical climate field reconstruction techniques to determine monthly temperature anomalies for the near-surface of the Antarctic ice sheet since 1957. Two independent data sets are used to provide estimates of the spatial covariance patterns of temperature: automatic weather stations and thermal infrared satellite observations. Quality-controlled data from occupied instrumental weather stations are used to determine the amplitude of changes in those covariance patterns through time. We use a modified principal component analysis technique (Steig et al., in review, Nature) to optimize the combination of spatial and temporal information. Verification statistics obtained from subsets of the data demonstrate the resulting reconstructions represent improvements relative to climatological mean values." Mann's not the only one inventing his own "modified" PCA. Looks like Steig "got rid of" antarctic cooling the same way Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why not just look at the station data instead of "adjusting" it (graph above)? It shows a 50-year cooling trend.

As if it's not bad enough that I'm home from work today with the Plague, I just watched President obama sign a number of Executive Orders:

The first will (supposedly) close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year....but leaves plenty of wiggle room for him to check the weather vane of public opinion and change his mind, which should be just about as soon as Americans realize that they don't want those terrorists in jails in their own back yards.

Bear in mind that of the terrorists ALREADY released from Gitmo, over fifty of them have returned to their murderous ways and been either captured again or killed.Some are still active but NOT dead or captured....

The second EO specifies the use of the Army Field Manual on Interrogations as the standard for ALL U.S. forces in the handling of any detainees. No more "tough" interrogation techniques like water-boarding, keeping them awake for a long time, "stress positions" that make them uncomfortable, and no more playing Barney the Purple Dinosaur songs really loud.......all of which are used in training some of our own troops, by the way, but are "too mean" for terrorists.

Oh-Mama bin-Hidin' must be laughing his beard off.

The third EO creates a "special task force" to "study the disposition of detainees".(This will be the mechanism which gives President bumpersticker the "out" to blame someone else for leaving at least some terrorists in Gitmo, ya know.)...and that "special task force" will include the likely new Attorney General - Eric Holder - who helped pardon the Puerto Rican FALN terrorist bombers, AND Marc Rich (who had business dealings with Iran WHILE 50+ Americans were being held hostage for 444 days).Military tribunals aren't good enough - and shouldn't be trusted in any case, according to the terrorist-hugging liberalites - so it will be the job of this new pile of bureaucraps to figure out what to do with each detainee, on a case by case basis....which should drag out the whole process (well over 300 detainees left, don'cha know) until at least late in BO's term.What a coincidence....

Perhaps harry reid will agree to have Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the 9/11 mastermind, who gave up his secrets ONLY after being water-boarded!) locked down in his hometown jail in Nevada?

It also looks like we'll have a confessed tax evader (geithner) in charge of the IRS as Treasury Secretary.Do we REALLY want someone who can't handle his own taxes in charge of managing the TRILLION DOLLAR BAIL OUT?

Where's the outcry from conservative reps over that abomination?Forget it, the mushy-moderates like hagel, graham, mccain and the rest are already kissing up to the liberalites and their lapdog media pals by bending over and grabbing their ankles.

And here's some additional considerations:

1. When it comes to putting Gitmo detainees in civilian courts in the U.S., consider the fact that German saboteurs - captured on American soil in WW2 - were tried in military tribunals and summarily executed (electric chair) during the Administration of the liberals' patron saint, FDR;

2. During the evidentiary process in an American court, the reasons we have for keeping some detainees could not be disclosed, since they could compromise National Security "assets" - which means either techniques, technologies, or human agents - which would then become either unusable or deceased.(as was the case after Sen. leahy "leaked" intel to the press, which got an Egyptian asset "slightly dead");

3. As a result of #2, some of the detainees would have to be released, under American civilian law;

4. Foreign nationals who have engaged in terrorism against Americans, and been detained because of it, are NOT entitled to American civil rights, but that's what the leftists in charge in D.C. are determined to GIVE them;

5. Those same terrorists are NOT entitled to ANY protections under ANY of the Geneva Convention Protocols, no matter how far you stretch them - I've TAUGHT the "Law of Land Warfare" to young soldiers, so I'm not just popping smoke on this;

6. The fact that BO has decided to leave two Bush43 appointees as envoys to Iraq and A-stan, and leaving Gates in as SecDef are NOT signs of "centrism", as the media spins it.They are tacit admissions that Bush was right.

In short, ANY illusions people might have about President barack hussein obama "governing from the center", ARE just smoke...and mirrors.

They won't prosecute Muslim antisemites but they will prosecute those who criticize Muslim antisemites. The Netherlands is sick to the core.

"A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.

Mr Wilders said the judgement was an "attack on the freedom of expression". "Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted," he said. Not only he, but all Dutch citizens opposed to the "Islamisation" of their country would be on trial, Mr Wilders warned. "Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?" he added.

The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.

If even a prominent politician is not free to speak out, what hope is there for the little guy?

There could however be a silver lining here. Everything Wilders said is true -- and proving that in court could be a real wake-up for the Dutch. Wilders may even have had that in mind from the beginning.

"We must get rid of the Medieval Warm period" was an early cry from Warmists. The period concerned is of course a complete refutation of Warmism so it had to be "got rid of" somehow. And, with his now discredited "hockeystick" graph, Michael Mann seemed to have done it. When that came unstuck they started to say that the period was just a "local" phenomenon. As there are now findings that it extended to both Argentina and New Zealand, that sure is a big locality!

Meanwhile, another big embarrassment in recent years has been the pesky non-melting of the Antarctic icecap. All observations show it as INCREASING in mass overall. But never fear! A way has now been found around that! And who is in on the fix? None other than that same old statistical faker, Michael Mann. Below is a popular report of the "research" followed by the journal abstract.

What they have done seems pretty clear. They have used one of the old dodges that Prof. Brignell calls "chartmanship". They have taken a distant and unusually cold year and shown that there has been warming since then. Utterly meaningless, of course.

US researchers have pored over data from satellites and weather stations in the biggest ever study of the frozen continent's climate and found it's warming after all. Barry Brook, director of the University of Adelaide's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, said the finding was alarming. Scientists now estimate the melting of Antarctica's massive ice sheets will cause the world's sea levels to rise by one to two metres by the end of the century.....

Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt more quickly. The research, contained in Thursday's issue of Nature, was also bad news for climate change in general, Professor Brook said. It had been thought Antarctica's cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a "cool pack", but this did not appear to be the case.

The US study found that eastern Antarctica - which includes the Australian zone - is getting cooler. But this is outweighed by western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula, which are warming. On average the continent is warming, the study found. Over the past 50 years much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world.

Study co-author Eric Steig from the University of Washington said the satellite data was revealing. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," he told Nature. Professor Brook said it had been thought Antarctica was cooling partly because of the hole in the ozone layer, which allowed the hot air out.

Assessments of Antarctic temperature change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent decades1. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to changes in stratospheric ozone2. This picture, however, is substantially incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations. Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 oC per decade over the past 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this is partly offset by autumn cooling in East Antarctica, the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive. Simulations using a general circulation model reproduce the essential features of the spatial pattern and the long-term trend, and we suggest that neither can be attributed directly to increases in the strength of the westerlies. Instead, regional changes in atmospheric circulation and associated changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice are required to explain the enhanced warming in West Antarctica.

Pigs are flying! An email below from Henry Geraedts [arbutuspoint@gmail.com] about NASA's Warmist in Chief, James Hansen

I am drawing your attention to a significant change in GISS GHG temperature trend projections published by Jim Hansen's team last week, and which appears to have gone largely unnoticed other than by Lucia Liljegren on her site "The Blackboard" [ www.rankexploits.com].

At the very end of the GISS update, under para #4 in the next to last paragraph, Hansen & Co state that: "From climate models and empirical analyses this GHG forcing translates into a mean warming rate of 0.15C per decade". Given that Jim Hansen is one of the leading and vocal proponents of the AGW/ACC hypothesis, that the GISS temperature data series has yet again come close scrutiny recently [Lubos Motl, et. al] and that GISS temperature data is increasingly at odds with satellite data [ref: today's posting on that subject at www.wattsupwiththat.com ] this revision is singularly noteworthy: the revised GISS GHG driven temperature trend is a whopping 25% lower than the IPCC's [95% certain] "gold standard" of 0.20C per decade.

Absent a GISS press release advising all of us of this change [which clearly would have been expecting too much], I thought you and your readers would find this of interest.

The story below is a dishonest attempt to cover up the folly of Capt. Burnett in the battle between HMAS Sydney and Kormoran under Capt. Detmers. They speculate below about Capt. Detmers using a white flag to fool Burnett, for instance. There is in fact zero mystery about what Detmers did. He certainly did all he could to allay suspicion as long as he could but Burnett was still amazingly overconfident in putting his ship within 1,000 yards of the Kormoran before final identification. And Detmers did NOT open fire before declaring himself. He did not even loose a torpedo until Sydney had fired a salvo. As soon as the Sydney came within close range, Detmers ran up the Kriegsmarine battle flag and THEN immediately opened fire with all he had. And he had a lot. For years. people doubted Detmers and the other German sailors who corroborated his account but everything he said from the beginning has eventually proved to be true and accurate so there is no reasonable room to doubt his account of the matter. See here for details of that account. It is in a way lucky that Burnett went down with his ship. There would have been ample precedent for court-martialling him had he survived.

The German raider Kormoran might have used a series of ruses to draw the cruiser HMAS Sydney into a range where it could ambush it with its guns, the HMAS Sydney inquiry heard yesterday. Captain (retired) Richard Arundel, former director of Naval Communications, said there had to be a reason why the commander of an Australian warship would make such a "gross error of judgment" in deciding to overhaul an unknown merchant vessel, believing it to be friendly, thereby putting his ship in a "suicidal position". It was "implausible" that Captain Joseph Burnett, with a tier of experienced naval officers to advise him, would have made such a manoeuvre unless there had been a "compellingly friendly identification event".

HMAS Sydney saw the Kormoran, disguised as a Dutch merchant ship, the Straat Malakka, off the West Australian coast on November 19, 1941, and challenged it. It drew very close, between 900 and 2000 metres, and the Kormoran dropped its disguise and attacked with guns and torpedo. Sydney sank with the loss of 645 men, and the Kormoran, also damaged, was scuttled.

Captain Arundel said that when challenged, the Kormoran did a manoeuvre consistent with a merchant ship's prescribed response, but it then sailed into the sun, making it difficult, along with the wind across the deck, for Sydney to read the signal flags. That would have tempted the Sydney to have come closer to get a better view. The Kormoran might also have been putting up its signals in a confused manner to convey the impression that it was a merchant ship in panic. [It did indeed do that]

He said this was conjecture, but the German Navy had made use of ruses before, such as in the Battle of Coronel in World War I , when its positioning of its ships in relation to the sun gave it victory over the British. Asked about the possibility of the Kormoran displaying the white flag of surrender, he said he had never seen one on a merchant ship and it was not part of the fitout of a warship. But Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Thomas Whittaker said he believed the Kormoran might have displayed the white flag while it launched its torpedo. When the torpedo struck, it might then have removed its camouflage, raised the German ensign and opened with its guns. He believed that had the Kormoran decided to take away its camouflage and run up its ensign without putting in the initial blow, the Sydney would have blown it out of the water.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."On Tuesday we will swear in the winner of November's media-kinked election.(If you DON'T think that the "news" jackals were the deciding factors in picking BOTH of the major parties' candidates, you must have been living in a cave, last year.)

Consider:Soon-to-be-President barack hussein obama has precisely ZERO personal or political accomplishments to elevate him above ANY of the squawking vultures of the Senate, and less than even most of the other denizens in Congress, who only do two year terms....in fact, the 140+ workdays that BO spent actually "WORKING" as a Senator (considering he's been campaigning for the White House for the past two years) is actually less "time in service" than what would be required to get a raw recruit promoted to buck sergeant!!!

As for his "character"?It was perfectly fine for BO to sit that Chicago church and listen to the "reverend" jeremiah wright's racist, anti-American speeches for 20+ years to get some "street cred in the hood", but as soon as the preacher's rhetoric became an embarrassment to candidate obama, BOOT TO THE HEAD!...and the guy he called his mentor (the guy who inspired the title of one of his books!) got kicked to the curb.

Of course, the fact that bill ayers and BO spent years on the same academic committee together - the Woods Foundation - and exchanged thousands of dollars in grant money, and had the aspiring young politician begin his political career by getting the blessing of ayers in his home doesn't mean anything.It doesn't mean that the "community organizer" knew ANYTHING about how ayers (and his lovely wife bernadine dohrn the convicted bomber) were domestic terrorists with the Weather Underground, back in the sixties....nevermind ayers' quote - after being acquitted on a technicality - "Guilty as hell, free as a bird, what a country...."

blogojevich?The guy who was RECORDED trying to trade BO's now-empty US Senate seat for money or a sweetheart appointment or a cushy job for him and his wife...?Well, uh...sure, BO endorsed him and spent a lot of time getting the "f-bomb" spewing Chicago punk elected governor of Illinois, but that doesn't mean that ANY of the swamp-slime stuck to him from the Chicago Machine that produced him, and he didn't really KNOW blogo, ya know....

In point of fact, nearly everyone I met who admitted they were voting for the Sacred Sock Puppet COULD NOT come up with ANY real accomplishments he's had, COULD NOT name any specifics of his grandiose plans, and most weren't even sure WHAT HIS PLANS WERE!...although a couple of them said they wanted to have sex with him........now THERE'S some damned solid reasoning for voting for an empty suit to become the 44th President of the United States!

Okay, let's be clear about this:

The Sacred Sock Puppet's selection is ALL about his skin color.95% of blacks (I don't do "hyphenated American") voted for him.Nearly every pro-BO voter had zero idea of what he stands for - except the empty bumpersticker rhetoric of "hope" and "change" - but they voted for him anyway.There's already "commemorative coins", plates, watches, and other chachki's flooding late night infomercials and street-corner hucksters' stalls.The word "historic" is being tossed around like balloons at a kid's birthday party.Absolutely NO "news" report goes by without some reference - indirect, usually - to the fact of his race....and hell and damnation were called down upon ANYONE who dared even utter the Sacred Sock Puppet's middle name, particularly from the MUSHY-MODERATES AMONG THE REPUBLICANS, ESPECIALLY THEIR SO-CALLED "NOMINEE"!!!

Face it, anyone who uses words like "historic", "unprecedented", or "post-racial" is - by definition - bowing at the Altar of Racism, since the ONLY difference between the Sacred Sock Puppet and every other previous President is THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN!

The bottom line is simply this:If you haven't already - MANY TIMES! - heard "news" jackals saying that the Sacred Sock Puppet is the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, trust me, you will.But the ugly reality is that the 44th President of the United States has nothing that can be even charitably described "CHARACTER", therefore he HAS been judged by the color of his skin.

barack hussein obama EMBODIES THE ANTITHESIS of Dr. King's "Dream", and I have zero doubt that the good Doctor is spinnin' like a wood lathe in his grave.

Luckily, MLK was a REAL man of God, and has likely already forgiven the scum who have perverted his dream.Perhaps, some day, his dream will REALLY come true...but not on 20 JAN 09.

About

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists. The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)